Website helps farmers save expensive feed
Yorkshire-based pig-breeding company, ACMC, has set up a web link offering a practical way of making significant feed savings.
British pig farmers facing sharp increases in feed costs – in addition to pressure on pig prices caused by foot-and-mouth disease restrictions.
The website can calculate the feed costs per kg of pigmeat produced and demonstrates what feed savings could be made on their own farms according to herd size and existing feed efficiency.
Example
For instance, the feeding of finishing progeny from an already-efficient 500-sow herd selling 22 pigs per sow a year at 95 kg liveweight with a feed conversion of 2.6 and an average feed cost of €252 per tonne would use €640,000 worth of feed annually.
Feed cost per kg liveweight gain would be €0.65, while the feed cost for each pig from weaning to slaughter would amount to €58.26.
Ultra-efficient animals
To lower feed costs, the breeding company has introduced new boars to their Vantage range of sires – the Vantage Plus – selected from the very top of the breeding pyramid.
To ensure that the most efficient animals can be accurately identified, the individual feed intake of all boars is measured during performance testing – along with live body scanning.
Improve
The company believes that the use of these ultra-efficient terminal sire-line boars – which are also available through AI – can improve a herd’s feed conversion by a minimum of 0.2.
This would reduce the feed cost by €4.49 per pig, giving a total finishing herd saving in their example of €49,300.
The company has calculated that, nationally, an improvement of just 0.1 in feed conversion would save 267,000 tonnes of feed, worth €59 million.
Related website:
• ACMC
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